Local health journalist wins recognition

In 1984, Riverdale journalist James J. Gormley’s colleague and friend Frank Murray, a food author, took the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to task with “More Than One Slingshot: How the Health Food Industry Is Changing America,” a book that chronicled the rise of the natural product industry and the intense legal battle between the health food industry and the FDA. Health advocates censured the FDA for attempting to unjustly regulate and classify vitamins and supplements, among other objections at the time. In the 1990s, Mr. Murray was ready to pass the baton. He approached Mr. Gormley with a proposition.

“He asked me, gee…why don’t you write a sequel to my book?” Mr. Gormley, 51, recounted. “Pick up the story of where I left off and really take it forward…. So I decided to not only pick up where he left off, but I decided to re-tell the story, incorporating some of the few examples that he had mentioned.” 

The result was Mr. Gormley’s latest book, “Health at Gunpoint: The FDA’s Silent War Against Health Freedom.” In it, the author outlines the origins of the U.S.’s natural health movement and addresses the complex relationship between the natural health market and the FDA, including the body’s alleged history of conducting armed raids on holistic practitioners, small farmers and dietary supplement manufactures while seemingly turning a blind eye to the risks involved in mainstream medicine and pharmaceuticals. While Mr. Murray’s book was written for a trade association, the Natural Products Association, “Health at Gunpoint” was independent and broader in scope.

“I really just told the story about, really, the early days of America, in some cases from the pioneer days,” he said. “Certainly from the 1800s and early 1900s — sort of telling it from a food standpoint, from a standpoint of conventional medicine versus alternative medicine and then also from the standpoint of these different forces, which converge to create the natural health movement within the United States.”